Well, that kind of sucked.

I went to round two of chemo today. It was really crowded. One woman
seemed like she was really having a rough time with nausea. The guy
next to me was quietly spitting globs of something into paper towels.

I got my pre-meds (an antinausea and a steroid and something for
heartburn) in my iv. She had trouble getting my iv started becuase my
veins just were acting shy and reclusive.

Things seemed fine after that; we were going through the Bent Objects
book and Pioneer Woman's cookbook. The only thing was that the one pre
med gave me really twitchy legs. I couldn't get settled. It bugged me.

When they started the actual chemo, the first drug went in for just a
few minutes and then all of a sudden I had a wave of horrible nausea/
pain in my lower stomach. And my face started to tingle and burn. So
my buddy went right over to the nurse's station.

All she said was 'my friend doesn't feel good'. Two nurses almost ran
over to me, and my face was absolutely tomato red at that point. Two
doctors appeared next (one was an intern; it's a teaching hospital) to
check my heart rate and oxygen saturation, which I guess was fine.

I didn't have any trouble breathing, but there was a portable oxygen
machine that came over to me at some point. I never had to get the
mask though-
I wasn't really panicking fully; I was trying to do deep yoga breaths
and stay calm. I knew that my drug orders included exactly what to
give in case of a reaction like this and the nurses are awesome there
so I felt like they were calm and knew how to handle this.

Everyone in the room was staring at moi. Including some guy in uniform
who was either a transport medic or security or something... Never did
figure that out. But I was very self conscious.

The chemo was stopped temporarily and I got meds to counter my
reaction. I had dry heaves for at least 10 minutes - joy. Then the one
medicine kicked in and that eased. They monitored my blood pressure
for at least half an hour. Then they started the chemo again at half
speed. So I had an hour to go, which was discouraging but I got
through it ok.

Then I went into the ladies room and managed to trigger the alarm
because I leaned on the armrail and the string was wrapped around it.
Oooopsie. The nurse was nice about it but I was MORTIFIED!

My friend gets extra karma points for today. She even left a cool
casserole with taco meat, sour cream, pasta, tomato sauce - D had two
helpings! Oh and brownies. What an awesome chick!